The Service Game

The morning mirror revealed everything he refused to acknowledge. His hair had migrated from his head to the shower drain, leaving a landscape he barely recognized. The vitamin supplements lined his bathroom counter like a desperate prayer—D3 for vitality, B-complex for energy, biotin for the very hair abandoning him.

She watched him from the doorway. "You going to wear that hat again?"

"I burned it."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "The baseball hat you've worn to cover your hairline since we started dating? You burned it?"

"Last night. In the fire pit."

She stepped closer, studying his face as if seeing him for the first time in years.

"Why?"

"Because I'm forty-five, Sarah. Not twenty-five. And I think I've been performing being someone I'm not. For you. For myself. For years."

The silence stretched between them, charged with everything they'd avoided saying.

Their padel game the following Saturday felt different. No scorekeeping. No silent competition. Just the rhythm of the ball, the sound of racquets, the way they moved together without words. Her hair caught the sunlight as she pulled it back, silver threads glinting at her temples. Time claiming them both, finally.

"You want to grab coffee after?" she asked. The question felt like something fragile, something new.

"Only if you let me buy you vitamins," he said. "Since apparently I'm trying to keep up with you."

She smiled—really smiled—for the first time in months.

"I've got my own supply, Marcus. But yeah. Coffee sounds good."

The padel court emptied behind them as they walked toward the café, side by side. Not opponents anymore. Not quite partners again either. But something like it. Something honest.

That night, he threw the remaining vitamin bottles in the trash. The mirror showed him the truth: some things couldn't be supplemented away. Some things had to be faced head-on, hat or no hat.

For the first time in years, he slept without wondering who he was trying to fool.